Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Most actors are starving. Most of us are walking around with a flashlight and tweezers looking for evidence. When you have someone that actually writes an acting role, it's rare."
"I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most."
"When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit."
"In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid."
"The secret is writing down one simple line after another."
"I'm just going to write because I cannot help it."
"I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right."
"Write like a motherfucker."
"If you don't like someone's story, write your own. If you don't like what somebody says, say what it is you don't like."
"Writing can be bad and still be part of something good. That 'art' is really 'artifact,' Exhibit A, Exhibit B, of something else: a person's whole experience and life. And that always there's the chance that this will fail. That things will not work out."
"I would still give my left ball to write anything as good as OK Computer."
"The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'"
"I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest."
"Wine buffs write and talk as though the food and wine will be in your mouth at the same time, that one is there to be poured over the other. This is bullshit. Gustatory enjoyment comes from food and wine and cigars of your liking. So far no one has said that a Monte Cristo is the only cigar to smoke after Armagnac, Romeo and Juliet after Calvados ... but the time may yet come."
"Every once and a while somebody writes a script, but even regardless of what age you are, most of the actors would all agree that it's all based upon material and the material has got to spark with you. It may be great material but you think it's great material for somebody else. Or it's great material and I'm perfect for it. So, you just have to make that judgment and if you feel in the mood to do it."
"It is the first line that gives the inspiration and then it's like riding a bull. Either you just stick with it, or you don't."
"I looked at myself, and I just said, well, you know, I can sing but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well, but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world... And so I said, well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing."
"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously."
"The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, most representative, most universal... That was something I earned from Kerouac, which was that spontaneous writing could be embarrassing... The cure for that is to write the thing down which you will not publish and which you won't show people. To write secretly... so you can actually be free to say anything you want."
"My biggest dream from the beginning - besides Evanescence - is scoring film and writing music for film."
